Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Politicians must denounce their violent supporters

By Lukoye Atwoli
Sunday Nation 20 January 2013

As we enter the home stretch towards the epochal
General Election in March, many events are taking place that give the
lie to the assumption that we are a functioning democracy. Some
indicators have already emerged that we are most likely just paying
lip-service to the concept of democracy while secretly wishing we could
rig the system such that no matter what happens, our preferred candidate
comes out on top.

Firstly, campaign violence is rearing its ugly
head again. People are being attacked, maimed and even killed in the
guise of campaign activity. Five years ago I argued in the Daily Nation
that giving crime labels such as “political violence” only “legitimises
crime and allows people to carry out barbaric acts without fearing the
repercussions”. In that article, I was warning about the risk of
escalation of conflict beyond that which is manageable if we allowed
politics to be the excuse for violence.

I argued for the “strict,
impartial and severe application of the law” in order to deter
hooligans who wore political masks and went out to harm others, knowing
that their political god-fathers would raise a ruckus if the law took
its course. I regret that I have to repeat this warning as we march towards the elections.

Secondly,
political arguments are becoming more and more shrill, with the tribal
essence driving it all becoming more and more evident.Tribal innuendo

A
recent opinion poll resulted in the CEO of the polling company being
called a tribalist because her polls showed that a candidate who might
share her ethnicity was leading. The resulting insults and both sexist
and tribal innuendo would make anyone who knows how violence is prepared
cringe.

We know from history that before all-out violence breaks
out, the potential perpetrators must be psychologically prepared for it.This is often done by gradually softening them and reducing the
innate human aversion to shedding human blood, often by portraying the
potential targets as something less than human. It begins by showing
examples of evil people within the target group, and both personalising
and magnifying the potential harm posed by them.

The message

Next,
their evil deeds are compared to the behaviour of animals and,
gradually, the message is subtly passed that it is okay to attack them
whenever one gets an opportunity.Once the ground has been
prepared thus, it takes only a small infraction for the potential
perpetrators to be aroused into “righteous anger” that sends them into a
genocidal frenzy, which eventually begins to feed off itself.

The
perpetrators go about their grim business without a care, and if you
confront them later, they may either explain it away as something that
was necessary at that time, or they may just exclaim that they did not
know what they were doing then.

The emergence of tribal “Councils
of Elders” that give political edicts with threats of damnation to
“their people” will only serve to legitimise any dehumanisation of the
opponent, changing elections into a matter of life and death for most of
those involved. For the sake of our children’s future, we must stop this jingoistic nonsense.

I
challenge all the political party leaders to denounce any of their
supporters who engage in violent acts, and to allow law enforcers to do
their job.